A Body Knows
by Missmishka
Summary: A trip into Carol's head in the moments after 2x07. Rated for darkness.  Updated with Daryl's POV & now complete.
1. Chapter 1

**_A Body Knows, by MissMishka_**

DISCLAIMER: The usual warnings, I claim no ownership of these characters, they are simply borrowed with love and adoration from the original creators to have their stories embellished on a little more than the show may do. Not for any profit.

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><p>Finally released from Daryl's restraining hold as the man reluctantly left her to help Rick as the group began to disintegrate after the shock passed, Carol continued to lay there in the dirt for a little while. Her tears continued to roll unchecked into the dirt as the others argued around her.<p>

Caught up as they were in the drama of what had just happened, no one seemed to notice or care when she finally raised her head and began to move. At little more than a crawl, she dragged her weary body across the short space of ground that was all the closer she'd gotten to her staggering child.

The blood that soaked the ground beneath Sophia's head was all wrong. Too dark and thick, but that was common with the Walkers as their blood was as dead as the rest of them. No matter how she fussed with it, she couldn't manage to get the knotted mess of her daughter's blonde hair to cover the hole blown out the back of her tiny head, so Carol stopped after a few tries. She raised herself to sit up and carefully turned the corpse of her little girl over, biting her lip to keep in a sob as her fingers skated over the hole blown dead center in Sophia's forehead.

With a mother's tender loving care, she closed the clouded over eyes of her baby girl then took the bottom of her shirt to begin wiping some of the blood off that beloved face. Once that was done, she found her fingers going to the ragged edges of flesh at the base of Sophia's neck.

She didn't know and couldn't guess if death had been quick after the bite. She prayed for whatever mercy there may be in God that it had been quick. Somehow, she doubted it, though, and the idea of her girl so scared and hurt and suffering alone was enough to shatter the grieving mother.

Her hands went under the stiff back of Sophia's corpse and she pulled the decaying body into her lap. Carol didn't smell the stench of death and rot, though, as she pressed her forehead to the same shoulder that had been torn open.

She smelled the bubble gum bubble bath that was her little girl's favorite.

Smelled the gentle "no tears" shampoo she had used to cleanse the child's hair years ago.

Smelled the overpowering amount of perfume Sophia had sprayed herself with when getting into Carol's few cosmetics to play dress-up at age four.

Smell was the strongest sense tied to memory and she clung tightly to the old memories to block out the stench of this new horror.

The argument was loud and painful and right there next to her, but Carol wasn't disturbed by it. Her mind did catch on to the topic, though, and part of her wanted to speak up, but it didn't matter to her what Hershel's group had known.

Carol had known when her child died, but she hadn't stopped the search.

_Wouldn't Shane just **love** to know that?_

He'd probably put a bullet in her head and the idea wasn't lacking in its appeal, but she didn't speak up as she rocked her baby as if to sleep.

It may have been an old wives' tale, but something like that a mother really did just know.

Just as her mother had known, years ago when that call had come.

Carol had been just eight and she had wondered where her fifteen year old brother was, but hadn't asked because her mom had been acting funny the whole day. Pacing and looking constantly out from the windows.

It'd been just the two of them to sit down to dinner that night, but her father's absence from the table wasn't so unusual with how hard he worked. It had been a Saturday, though, and she had some vague memory of a fishing trip being talked about at dinner the night before.

The ringing of the phone had been shrill in the eerily quiet house and her mother had dropped her fork with a clatter at the sound. The woman's eyes and hand had both raised at the ringing, eyes locking on the phone like it were a poisonous snake, hand going to her chest as if her heart were trying to get out.

"_I got it," the young Carol had jumped up helpfully as her mom had seemed frozen in her chair._

A very somber voice had asked to speak to Mrs. Arthur Moore as soon as Carol answered the phone.

"_Mommy, it's for you."_

The memory of how slowly her mother had risen to take the call had seared itself into Carol's mind, as had the image of the woman collapsing to the floor when that somber voice told her of the accident that had killed her husband and son.

The only reason Carol had really relented to the idea of the group leaving the highway and coming to set up a base on this farm was because she had woken with the sickening lurch of knowledge that morning they made the move.

She had felt the tear of teeth as if on her own flesh and startled Daryl awake in the RV with her scream at what she knew now to have been no nightmare. Her hand had gone to her heart as he had leapt from the floor to take out the threat before he had realized there wasn't one and turned to assure her that it had just been a bad dream. As had already become her habit at that point, she just accepted his words in hope that they were truer than her own thoughts and senses. Under her palm, though, her heart had thumped unsteadily, heavy with the weight of knowing that its reason to beat was no longer among the living.

After he'd been hurt, she'd tried in her best way to tell Daryl, not wanting him to take any more risks when this was the only outcome she could see. In that moment, though, in the clearing he had taken her to, the conviction with which he had spoken had fooled her into hoping that maybe he knew more than she did.

His tears were mixed with hers in the dirt nearby and, knowing that, she wept harder against the lost hope of her child.

Lost in her grief, she knew nothing of when the group moved off toward the house, arguing with Hershel for a right to stay after the horror that lay on the ground all around her because of them. She knew, though, that he hadn't gone with them even before she felt him kneel next to her. Her head didn't lift as she felt his arms come around them both, taking both her and the corpse unquestioningly against his own chest.

His head pressed again to her back as it had earlier as he'd restrained her and his sorrow was a palpable as her own. For that reason, she took a hand from around Sophia's body and wound it around his arm to further pull him into the morbid embrace. Not knowing how to offer comfort when it'd never been received, he was almost as stiff and unyielding as the corpse, but after a moment, he instinctively picked up her rocking motion.

The sun was beginning to set when they broke apart. She laid her child back down on the ground once Daryl quietly rose to his feet to indicate that they had to stop. Despite the mother's instinct to do so, she refrained from bending to kiss her baby's forehead as she had done countless times after settling the child down to sleep. Blood had oozed once more from the hole in that forehead and Carol could take no chance of getting the infection in her, so she settled for pressing a kiss to fingers that had had no direct contact with the body and then lying those fingertips to her daughter's face one last time.

He helped her up and she wasn't surprised to find she needed it. Her body felt numb and boneless, so she leant on him without a word as he led her away.

While the loss of a child was something that a mother just knew, there were some things that any body simply knows. Even in its exhaustion and distress, hers knew it could lean on his.

And that it would have to if, she had any intention of getting past this day.


	2. Chapter 2

Because my muses have me in a real hurt locker this weekend and Daryl needed this.

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><p>The yelling was growing louder, but Daryl just tightened his hold on Carol and held her sobbing frame to his own just a little longer.<p>

It didn't matter that the last shot had rang out minutes ago and not a single body on the ground was so much as twitching, he still imagined her slipping past him and embracing Sophia and he was terrified that if he let her go he'd find her body among the corpses with her throat ripped out too.

When the sound of fist on flesh contact added itself to the raised voices of the group, he knew he had to do something. Wiping his wet face against the back of her shirt was a wasted effort as the material was soaking from sweat and tears. He eased his grip slowly, cautious to see how she'd react. With each loosening of his hold, though, her body just sank lower and lower until it laid shuddering with tears in the dirt.

Leaving her there like that tore him up inside and he was glad to have the promise of violence to turn to. He reached back to collect his shotgun from the ground before jumping to his feet. He checked the chamber for any grit that might jam it up, then braced the weapon against his shoulder and lined the site up with the shaven head standing out among the others in the group.

It took him a few moments to get a feel for the way the other man moved as he paced and yelled at Hershel's people, ducking another blow from T-Dog. Once he had it, though, he pulled the trigger and wished he hadn't spent all his shells in the last horrific moments taking out the Walkers like fish in a barrel.

_If only he'd had the forethought to take the shot sooner, they might have been spared some part of this_, he regretted as he lowered the gun slowly.

He cast his eyes around the ruin around him, tormented by, but grateful for the vision of Carol grieving in the midst of the bodies, a mere ten feet or so from the slain corpse of her little girl. After a bracing breath, he flipped the gun in his grip and rushed in to the fray to slam the butt of the shotgun against the back of Shane's head.

The asshole just shook it off and turned on him with blood in his eye, but that didn't surprise Daryl any. Adrenaline was the natural high every one of Merle's drugs had tried to replicate and as hopped up on it as the Officer was, there were few things that would manage to take him down.

He tossed the gun aside with a grin, relishing the promise of a good grappling, but Lori broke it up before either man could make a move.

"Enough," she whispered brokenly, still on the ground, cradling her boy to her chest and trying without success to keep his gaze from the little girl with the hole in her head.

Daryl was inclined to throw a few punches despite the protest, but Shane deflated in such a way when he looked at the woman and child that Daryl knew that he'd get no satisfaction from the exercise.

"All this time, we've been running around like fools and he knew, Lori," the big man argued, turning his fire back on Hershel. "They all knew she was in there this whole time and would have let us die looking. We can't stand for that!"

"We didn't know!"

Maggie's protest and the suffering in her eyes as she tried to shield her father made Daryl a believer. That she hadn't known, but he saw the truth in the broken man she hovered over.

He fell back from the gathering at that. Not really stunned by the realization that Sophia was likely in the barn even while the veterinarian stitched up the wounds he knew Daryl to have gotten while looking for the child, but surprised to not give a damn.

There was no point to the fighting they were doing and for once he felt no desire to hurl himself into a pointless battle just for the chance of a good brawl resulting.

He watched, feeling gutted and tasting bile in his mouth, as Rick continued the pointless struggle of trying to bring order to the people he had come to lead. Daryl had never envied the other man for taking the role and he only felt a deep sense of pity for the fool just then. The nightmares that that man would have after this day, after being the one to take _that_ shot, were the likes of which that even a man such as Daryl could not imagine having or living through.

Finally, the group began to break apart and take their debate to the main house. His gaze tracked them until they disappeared from sight, watchful of them all for signs of trouble as had become his habit.

When he dropped his gaze to the ground where he'd left her, he felt no surprise or fear to find Carol gone. He only had to turn around further to find her cradling Sophia.

The bile demanded an out at the sight and he doubled over to puke, oddly surprised at the lack of vomit on the ground given the gruesome scene. At any other time he might have found it funny that he tossed his cookies now when he could so calmly delve into the bowels of a Walker while Rick gagged or find humor in the shredded legs of the zombie piñata while Andrea lost it.

He'd only picked at his breakfast, too unsettled to eat even before Glenn's announcement, so the purge didn't take long. He spit a few extra times, wishing for something to get the taste out of his mouth, then kicked some dirt over it for another task to help him regain some composure.

He didn't really know what to do or how to begin doing it, so he moved slowly to her.

She rocked the body, just like Lori had done while clutching Carl.

It had to be a mother thing, but Daryl had no memories of such a thing. As far as he knew from what Merle had delighted in telling him, his mom had pushed him out then taken off as soon as the cord was cut and he was damned lucky the woman had given him that much.

Clumsy with inexperience, he put his knee down hard in the dirt to kneel next to them.

She gave no sign of reaction or acknowledgement to his presence and his hands rose then fell a few times while he played out the options in his head.

His first instinct was to tear her away from the corpse, feeling the recoil in his gut from the stench of Sophia's rot, but he sensed in Carol a need for the moment. He thought of trying to pat her back or rub her shoulder to ease her through her grieving, but that gesture felt empty and incomplete when it ran through his head, so it was discarded.

He remembered her wrapped in his arms on the ground nearby. It had been instinct that sent his arms flying out to grab her and hold her back and that instinct had proven the right thing to do, so he obeyed it once more.

With the way she held Sophia against her, there was no choice but his arms to wrap around the corpse the same as they wound around Carol. He thought that there should be something wrong with his embracing the child, but found, once his arms closed around them both, that it just felt right. He pressed his forehead into the center of Carol's upper back and damned near started bawling again.

Merle laughed openly at them, ridiculing his brother with the evidence of all hoping ever led to, but Daryl let go of that ghost when Carol finally showed a sign of life and wrapped her hand around his forearm.

Having no idea what the hell kind of emotion tore through him at that simple action, he raised his head to tuck his chin against the crook of her shoulder. He focused on the faint scent of flowers from the soap she and all the women in camp used and began to sway. It was awkward at first, but he eventually just let himself meld to her and pick up the natural rocking motion of Carol's body.

The motion felt good.

Rhythmic, like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, it somehow soothed and relaxed Daryl's frayed and confused nerves. Moms were definitely on to something with it. Probably why they all chose to do it in such chaotic times.

He stayed in the moment with them until the sun started to set and knew to continue wouldn't help anyone or anything. His body protested when he pushed it to stand, drawing his attention to the fact that he'd been on his knees in the dirt a good few hours.

He focused on the surprise that no one had checked on or interrupted then in all that time, deliberately averted his eyes from the sight of that goodbye kiss Carol gave her child after tenderly lying the corpse back down among the others. His damned heart couldn't handle a display of such unconditional love and affection.

Sensing she was ready, and imaging how her body must be feeling from the past few hours, he bent to carefully guide her to her feet with a hand under her elbow. She collapsed against his side and it, again, just felt natural to embrace her. He turned their bodies away from the carnage and they staggered back to the campsite together.


End file.
